Don’t panic: the researchers’ concerns do not include commercial treats like cookie-dough ice cream and packaged refrigerated cookie dough. Ever since 2009, when a strain of E. coli from commercial cookie dough sickened 77 people, and flour was the suspected cause, ingredients are not only pasteurized but heat-treated. (This explains why those cookie dough chunks extracted from ice cream pints don’t bake up like the real thing — though people keep trying.) Although the recall was initiated over a year ago, the broader message about uncooked flour products was not widely known. A spokesman for General Mills underscored the advice not to eat raw batter, saying the company cannot heat-treat flour before packaging it.

Source: New York Times November 22, 2017 22:00 UTC